


Legacy

by anniespinkhouse



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Implied Het, M/M, Spoilers, non explicit sexual concepts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-29
Updated: 2013-03-29
Packaged: 2017-12-06 21:55:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/740572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anniespinkhouse/pseuds/anniespinkhouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based after 8.18, vague spoilers for the entire series.<br/>Sam sometimes feels like he's being watched. He is. This tells the story of the very human person, who sometimes watches over him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legacy

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This is all fiction, pure fantasy folks. Kripke and CW get to keep the boys.
> 
> AN: Sometimes I write things because I am scared of what the real writers are going to give us, and I need an alternative head canon to distract me. This is one such occasion.

Sam tilts his head and listens. He looks all around, but he can't see anyone lurking. Dean sits opposite him at the picnic table. He chews his burger, picks out pieces of lettuce, and comments, “Dude, only a rabbit needs that much salad.”  
  
Sam has a tingle down his spine. Nothing definable, just a hunch that they're being watched. It has happened before, usually when they're on a case, often when Cas still waged war in heaven. Not so long ago, Lucifer's hallucination was a bitter presence, but this particular spidey-sense was an infrequent occurrence long before he jumped into the cage. It has never harmed him. Sam squints into the low winter sun that throws shadows by the tree line, but sees nothing there.  
  
“Sam. You okay?”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, just thought … Never mind.” He shakes his head and digs a fork into his salad. His hair blows in the wind, and Dean leans over to catch at strands with his fingers and tuck it behind his ear. Sam shakes it back out and scowls.  
  
“Get you, Princess!” smiles Dean over his coffee cup.  


 

***

  
Sam doesn't smile like he used to. She thinks she knows why. She remembers his smile, innocent, wide and blindingly white. She remembers the sadness too. He has changed, but grief is never far from him. She's followed his story, picked up pieces of the horror he's known, and her heart aches for him. Dean has changed too. He's older, more at ease with himself, and yet she sees his tension, and the sudden moments of panic that he cannot hide.  
  
Dean touches Sam, his wafting hair is an excuse for a moment of reassurance that Sam is there and solid. She thinks they've only ever needed each other, and somehow she has never resented it.  
  
The sun is in her favor, she slinks behind trees and into dappled sunshine, where movement is constant, and her presence is hard to discern. Her station wagon sits at the roadside where she left it. She sighs, a little relieved, a little sad, and with a lot of yearning, then checks that her sigils and locks remain secure. She throws her bag in the trunk over a supply of salt, a shotgun and a shovel, slams it shut, and climbs into the driving seat.  
  
Sparkling hazel eyes check her appearance in the rear view mirror, and she combs dark shiny hair into some sort of order with her fingers. She pauses before driving away, to review the pictures she has taken of Sam, and of his brother. Sam has lost weight since the last time she saw him, and he's pale. She's worried and wants to go back, touch him, and ask, but she has her own responsibility, and so has Dean. Three's a crowd and it's the way it has worked all these years. Sometimes, it has been a year between sightings, other times, she has glimpsed them two or three times in a month. She doesn't travel far from home, her responsibilities keep her near, but in the past Bobby could be relied on to drop a hint of their whereabouts. Now that Bobby is gone, she gets her gossip on the hunter grapevine and studies for signs of angels and demons. It's not the best system, but in this case it has worked well enough.  


 

***

  
Dean drives while Sam shuts his eyes and tries to suppress the coughs that well from his lungs. It's been a few days since Victor asked him if he wanted children, and he still doesn't know his answer. Maybe once, he might have considered it, but danger is constant for a Winchester. He can't imagine what pain a child of his may have to endure. Still, he wonders about responsibility and a world that has seen the last of the Winchesters. He's not sure that is right either.  
  
A hand rests on Sam's leg. It's warm comfort, and he doesn't object. The radio plays old tunes, Dean hums, and Sam is safe in his brother's care. He naps, with his head lolling against the rattling window of Dean's baby. He might drool a little, but he won't admit to it later.  


 

***

  
She aches from digging but she's used to it. Her hunt is a simple salt and burn. The graveyard is ancient and overgrown, so she can complete her task in the relative safety of daylight. The Winchesters taught her to hunt, but she's not reckless like them. She has to make it home every time. She owes that to Sam. Anything more than a simple haunting is passed to other hunters. Hunting makes her feel alive though. It gives her a connection, and a sense of inheritance to pass forward. She checks her watch when she's through, gives a call on her cell to say she's on her way home.  
  
Sarah Blake is clean and freshly dressed, standing by the school gates when the bell rings. Her son is a bundle of energy as he dashes into her arms. His foxy green eyes look up at her, and his brunette hair is mussed in the wind, he hates to have it cut. She hugs him close and reassures him that she's home. It was only one night apart, and the babysitter is a trusted friend, but she knows that Sammy gets scared of the monsters in the night.  
  
“Did you get pictures?” the boy asks excitedly.  
  
She smiles serenely and shushes him, Sammy remembers that it is their secret and motions a zip on his mouth.  
  
When they are home, in the salted confines of four walls with hex bags in the corners and borax under the sink, Sarah carefully prints the photographs she has taken. They sit on her big empty bed, (there hasn't been anyone serious since her brief fling with Sam), and she slides the scrapbooks from their hiding place.  
  
Sammy insists they start at the beginning. The first pages have a security-camera picture of daddy and Uncle Dean at an art viewing, and several sketches by his Ma. There is a sappy poem she wrote describing romance and adventure, and the love to let someone go. It doesn't touch on Sarah's initial horror, when she realized that the condom must have failed during her first and only one-night-stand, with Sam Winchester. It focuses instead, on her immediate, intense love, for the _little Sammy_ that grew inside her.  
  
Then, there is the 20-week scan of Sammy himself and pictures of him as a baby. A different scrap book has newspaper and magazine images of his daddy and Uncle Dean, with no context. Sarah has removed the text that accompanied the pictures of the Winchesters, and never believed the damning articles of robbery and murder. By then, in her search for the father of her child, she had researched the supernatural with ever increasing knowledge, and had a passing conversation with a hunter called Jo.  
  
Pictures and purpose changed when Sammy was one, after Inias appeared. _Angels,_ who would believe it? Sammy likes Inias, he doesn't remember how he screamed when the angel burned his baby chest, with an _ant-possess_ on his skin and _s'chills_ on his ribs, to hide him from the devil. Sarah briefly wonders what has become of the angel. It's been almost a year since he last appeared, with a shy smile, a toy, and a rustle of wings, to check on his charge. Sam has a destiny, and Sammy does too,but it isn't the same. Together they would pose danger for each other.  
  
Sometimes, it is all too much for Sarah. She loves her son completely. He is a bright ray of sunshine in her life, with a smile that is so similar to Sam's that it breaks her heart. Sammy is a _legacy_ , to be treasured, but his own father cannot be the one to do it.  
  
They turn to an empty page, and Sammy wants to place the photographs. He pastes Uncle Dean's picture before coating the back of his daddy's picture with huge globs of glue. He turns it over and smooths it onto the paper. His mouth smiles wide and his dimples show. “There,” he says proudly. She lets him write captions underneath, _My daddy, My Uncle Dean_ , he writes neatly, in newly learned, joined-up letters. He chews his pencil and then, with Sarah's help, adds, _Heroes_ , and underlines the word three times.  
  
Sammy doesn't ask when he will meet his daddy. Inias once told him it made his mummy cry when he begged for his daddy, and the angel had confided in him, “One day you will meet him, after the world has been saved.”  
  
His Ma moves the scrap book to the nightstand to let the glue dry. Sammy thinks she looks sad, so he gives her a hug. His arms clutch around her slim waist, and he reassures her, “Uncle Dean will take care of daddy, I know he will.” Sammy kisses her cheek, then leans over and kisses the faces in his pictures. He fights back tears, because he knows he must be brave. When he grows up, he will be a Winchester, and then _he_ will be a hero too.  
  
Heroes don't cry.

 

~end~


End file.
